1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a storage medium storing a plurality of pieces of data which are to be reproduced in a plurality of ways of reproduction, a recording apparatus for recording in a storage medium a plurality of pieces of data which are to be reproduced in a plurality of ways of reproduction, and a reproducing apparatus for reproducing the plurality of pieces of data which are recorded in the storage medium and to be reproduced in a plurality of ways of reproduction. A typical examples of the storage medium is a data storage disk such as a magnetic disk, a magneto-optic disk, an optical disk (including a CD-ROM, a DVD-ROM, a DVD-RAM, and a DVD-R), and the like, and the present invention can be applied to use with any other storage medium in which information can be stored in a sequential order, and from which information can be read in a sequential order. A typical example of the plurality of pieces of data which are to be reproduced in a plurality of ways of reproduction, is multimedia data. Hereinafter, the word "type" is used to mean "way in which data is to be reproduced". Namely, "data which are to be reproduced in different ways" is expressed as "different types of data" in the following descriptions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, there has been a requirement to store in a storage medium such as a CD-ROM, a plurality of pieces of multimedia data which are to be reproduced in a plurality of ways of reproduction, such as text data, sound data, dynamic (moving) images, static (still) images, and the like. Conventionally, multimedia data which are to be reproduced in a plurality of ways of reproduction, are stored in different regions (tracks) in a storage medium according to the ways of reproduction, respectively. For example, as indicated in FIG. 1, sound data, dynamic image, static image, are respectively stored in different tracks, and information on the assignment of the tracks to the respective types of data is written in the TOC (Table of Contents) area. However, since different types of data are required to be written in different tracks according to the information in the TOC area, in the above conventional technique, the data writing control is complicated. Therefore, failure in writing data often occurs. In addition, according to the above conventional technique, timing control data for synchronization among different types of data must be attached to the respective pieces of data of the different types, it is necessary to provide software for generating and writing the timing control data for synchronization in the storage medium software is also needed for reproducing the data of the different types in synchronization with each other based on the timing control data for synchronization written in the storage medium. Further, according to the above conventional technique, the head of the storage medium driving device must be frequently moved from one track to another for reading different types of data, which are stored in different tracks, based on the information written in the TOC area.